Connect with us

Filmmaking

3 things I learned from teaching students about horror pioneer George Romero’s movies during these scary times

Published

on

3 things I learned from teaching students about horror pioneer George Romero’s movies during these scary times

I’m no fan of horror movies. At least I wasn’t until I moved from Hollywood back to my hometown of Pittsburgh, where I met the legendary independent filmmaker George Romero, best known as the inventor of the modern-day zombie and movies like “Night of the Living Dead.”

I had avoided seeing George’s movies for two reasons. First, they’re scary. Second, when I was a teen, my mother had a role in a Romero film initially titled “Hungry Wives.” After seeing some raw footage in which I saw a woman in the movie disrobe, I feared that my mother was naked in it. (Spoiler alert: She wasn’t.)

Carl Kurlander (left) and George Romero in 2017.
Steeltown Entertainment Project, CC BY-SA

This past year, I gained a deeper appreciation of his work while teaching “Making the Documentary: George Romero and Pittsburgh,” a course in which my students had access to the newly acquired Romero Archives.

Some students were big fans of the great filmmaker, who shot 14 movies in Pittsburgh. Others had no idea who he was. Together, we learned three important lessons about survival and the human condition. I believe they are especially important today because of the coronavirus pandemic and the damage it’s unleashing.

An interview with filmmaker George Romero.

1. He was a visionary

Romero, who died in 2017, didn’t make just popular zombie flicks. His other films, which garnered less acclaim and profits, transcend horror movies.

Many of today’s filmmakers producing socially conscious hit thrillers, like “Get Out” creator Jordan Peele and “Shape of Water” creator Guillermo Del Toro, credit Romero for pioneering this genre.

Take “Season of the Witch,” the official name of that Romero movie my mother was in – fully clothed. It features a suburban housewife who dabbles in witchcraft to explore her feminist powers – and uses it to dispose of her abusive husband.

Another good example is “Martin,” Romero’s favorite. Romero shot it in a once-thriving steel town outside Pittsburgh. The titular main character, a young man who may or may not be a vampire, represents the threat of generational change to a community literally having the life sucked out of it.

Particularly prescient is “The Crazies,” which tells the story of a mysterious virus that infects the citizens of Evans City, Pennsylvania, driving some of them mad. The government calls in the military and quarantines the town. It’s soon hard to tell who is crazy because of the virus and who went insane because of the circumstances.

The government ends up losing the vaccine that could save everyone. Let’s hope this isn’t a case of art predicting real life.

Trailer from ‘The Crazies,’ George Romero’s 1973 film about ‘madness unleashed by human error.’

2. He established a powerful metaphor for the human condition

What makes Romero’s vision unique is that his worst monsters aren’t aliens or creatures menacing humanity. Instead, those monsters are us.

In “Night of the Living Dead,” strangers gather in a farmhouse. The fighting among the humans themselves leads to their demise as much as the attack of the undead in what is widely considered the first modern zombie flick. Interestingly, Romero never used the term “zombie” in the script. He called the creatures “ghouls.”

When Romero shot “Dawn of the Dead,” as a hippie at heart he decided to use a local shopping mall as a set. It also served as a prop to make a statement about the mindless consumer culture that all Americans seemed trapped in – even in the afterlife.

For “Day of the Dead,” Romero converted an abandoned underground mine shaft in Wampum, a small Pennsylvania town about 40 miles from Pittsburgh, into a bunker. There, the last survivors of a zombie apocalypse hunker down while the military and government officials fight with scientists trying to better understand the undead. Meanwhile, a zombie that scientists are trying to “train” seems more humane than the folks on whom the fate of our species rests.

The ‘Day of the Dead’ trailer.

3. He was a truly independent and maverick filmmaker

Romero and nine of his friends each initially pitched in US$600 in seed money to make “Night of the Living Dead.” The film later grossed more than $30 million, on what according to many reports was a total budget of only $114,000.

But neither Romero nor his investors would pocket much of that bounty because of a dispute with the distributor. The movie became upon its release one of only a handful of films without copyrights, because of a last-minute title change. (The original title was “Night of the Living Flesh Eaters.”)

Romero could have leveraged the unexpected fame that came without a fortune into a ticket to Hollywood. Instead, he stayed in Pittsburgh, working with low budgets and small crews and retaining creative control over his projects.

My students were inspired by tales of Romero’s ingenuity. For example, because Romero decided that zombies must walk slowly, he faced a problem with how the first zombie would catch up to one of the film’s protagonists in the first scene of “Night of the Living Dead.”

When it turned out the car the production had borrowed had been in an accident, instead of having it fixed, Romero used the dent as an excuse to have the car hit the tree. The staged accident make it easy for the zombie to nearly catch – and terrify – her.

A tribute to ‘Night of the Living Dead’ 25 years after its original release.

An inspirational legacy

After the pandemic turned my students’ lives into something out of a Romero movie, they found inspiration in how the horror pioneer made the most from what was around him. They kept interviewing subjects over Zoom and developed their own remote way of sharing footage and editing to complete their film.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Many of them now aspire to make films independently as Romero did and see where their imaginations take them without decamping to Hollywood. While steering clear of COVID-19, they are figuring out how to survive just as the heroes of his movies did.

Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Filmmaking

Blurry, morphing and surreal – a new AI aesthetic is emerging in film

Published

on

By

Blurry, morphing and surreal – a new AI aesthetic is emerging in film


Type text into AI image and video generators, and you’ll often see outputs of unusual, sometimes creepy, pictures.

In a way, this is a feature, not a bug, of generative AI. And artists are wielding this aesthetic to create a new storytelling art form.

The tools, such as Midjourney to generate images, Runway and Sora to produce videos, and Luma AI to create 3D objects, are relatively cheap or free to use. They allow filmmakers without access to major studio budgets or soundstages to make imaginative short films for the price of a monthly subscription.

I’ve studied these new works as the co-director of the AI for Media & Storytelling studio at the University of Southern California.

Surveying the increasingly captivating output of artists from around the world, I partnered with curators Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells to produce the Flux Festival, a four-day showcase of experiments in AI filmmaking, in November 2024.

While this work remains dizzyingly eclectic in its stylistic diversity, I would argue that it offers traces of insight into our contemporary world. I’m reminded that in both literary and film studies, scholars believe that as cultures shift, so do the way we tell stories.

With this cultural connection in mind, I see five visual trends emerging in film.

1. Morphing, blurring imagery

In her “NanoFictions” series, the French artist Karoline Georges creates portraits of transformation. In one short, “The Beast,” a burly man mutates from a two-legged human into a hunched, skeletal cat, before morphing into a snarling wolf.

The metaphor – man is a monster – is clear. But what’s more compelling is the thrilling fluidity of transformation. There’s a giddy pleasure in seeing the figure’s seamless evolution that speaks to a very contemporary sensibility of shapeshifting across our many digital selves.

Karoline Georges’ short film ‘The Beast.’

This sense of transformation continues in the use of blurry imagery that, in the hands of some artists, becomes an aesthetic feature rather than a vexing problem.

Theo Lindquist’s “Electronic Dance Experiment #3,” for example, begins as a series of rapid-fire shots showing flashes of nude bodies in a soft smear of pastel colors that pulse and throb. Gradually it becomes clear that this strange fluidity of flesh is a dance. But the abstraction in the blur offers its own unique pleasure; the image can be felt as much as it can be seen.

2. The surreal

Thousands of TikTok videos demonstrate how cringey AI images can get, but artists can wield that weirdness and craft it into something transformative. The Singaporean artist known as Niceaunties creates videos that feature older women and cats, riffing on the concept of the “auntie” from Southeast and East Asian cultures.

In one recent video, the aunties let loose clouds of powerful hairspray to hold up impossible towers of hair in a sequence that grows increasingly ridiculous. Even as they’re playful and poignant, the videos created by Niceaunties can pack a political punch. They comment on assumptions about gender and age, for example, while also tackling contemporary issues such as pollution.

On the darker side, in a music video titled “Forest Never Sleeps,” the artist known as Doopiidoo offers up hybrid octopus-women, guitar-playing rats, rooster-pigs and a wood-chopping ostrich-man. The visual chaos is a sweet match for the accompanying death metal music, with surrealism returning as a powerful form.

Doopiidoo’s uncanny music video ‘Forest Never Sleeps’ leverages artificial intelligence to create surreal visuals.
Doopiidoo

3. Dark tales

The often-eerie vibe of so much AI-generated imagery works well for chronicling contemporary ills, a fact that several filmmakers use to unexpected effect.

In “La Fenêtre,” Lucas Ortiz Estefanell of the AI agency SpecialGuestX pairs diverse image sequences of people and places with a contemplative voice-over to ponder ideas of reality, privacy and the lives of artificially generated people. At the same time, he wonders about the strong desire to create these synthetic worlds. “When I first watched this video,” recalls the narrator, “the meaning of the image ceased to make sense.”

In the music video titled “Closer,” based on a song by Iceboy Violet and nueen, filmmaker Mau Morgó captures the world-weary exhaustion of Gen Z through dozens of youthful characters slumbering, often under the green glow of video screens. The snapshot of a generation that has come of age in the era of social media and now artificial intelligence, pictured here with phones clutched close to their bodies as they murmur in their sleep, feels quietly wrenching.

A pre-teen girl dozes while holding a video game controller, surrounded by bright screens.
The music video for ‘Closer’ spotlights a generation awash in screens.
Mau Morgó

4. Nostalgia

Sometimes filmmakers turn to AI to capture the past.

Rome-based filmmaker Andrea Ciulu uses AI to reimagine 1980s East Coast hip-hop culture in “On These Streets,” which depicts the city’s expanse and energy through breakdancing as kids run through alleys and then spin magically up into the air.

Ciulu says that he wanted to capture New York’s urban milieu, all of which he experienced at a distance, from Italy, as a kid. The video thus evokes a sense of nostalgia for a mythic time and place to create a memory that is also hallucinatory.

Andrea Ciulu’s short film ‘On These Streets.’

Similarly, David Slade’s “Shadow Rabbit” borrows black-and-white imagery reminiscent of the 1950s to show small children discovering miniature animals crawling about on their hands. In just a few seconds, Slade depicts the enchanting imagination of children and links it to generated imagery, underscoring AI’s capacities for creating fanciful worlds.

5. New times, new spaces

In his video for the song “The Hardest Part” by Washed Out, filmmaker Paul Trillo creates an infinite zoom that follows a group of characters down the seemingly endless aisle of a school bus, through the high school cafeteria and out onto the highway at night. The video perfectly captures the zoominess of time and the collapse of space for someone young and in love haplessly careening through the world.

The freewheeling camera also characterizes the work of Montreal-based duo Vallée Duhamel, whose music video “The Pulse Within” spins and twirls, careening up and around characters who are cut loose from the laws of gravity.

In both music videos, viewers experience time and space as a dazzling, topsy-turvy vortex where the rules of traditional time and space no longer apply.

A car in flames mid-air on a foggy night.
In Vallée Duhamel’s ‘The Pulse Within,’ the rules of physics no longer apply.
Source

Right now, in a world where algorithms increasingly shape everyday life, many works of art are beginning to reflect how intertwined we’ve become with computational systems.

What if machines are suggesting new ways to see ourselves, as much as we’re teaching them to see like humans?





Source link

Continue Reading

Filmmaking

We’re in a golden age for body horror films – as Demi Moore’s The Substance proves

Published

on

By

We’re in a golden age for body horror films – as Demi Moore’s The Substance proves


In the 1980s, film scholar Barbara Creed coined the term the “monstrous-feminine”. It refers to the way that female monsters are typically portrayed as threatening and disgusting for reasons connected to their bodies and their sexuality. New film The Substance takes a leaf out of Creed’s book by proposing a feminist critique of female experience through the visceral language of the body horror, a sub-genre preoccupied with the transformation, destruction or grotesque exaggeration of the human body.

The Substance is a film about a fading Hollywood star who will go to any lengths to stay beautiful. After having her TV aerobics show cancelled, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) resorts to a mysterious serum that can create a “better” version of her – a younger double she can inhabit a few days at a time.

As the pull of success and the return of public recognition lure Sparkle away from her older, now abandoned self, horrendous mutations ensue. It seems poignant that the protagonist of this dark parable should be played by Moore, an actor whose looks have long been scrutinised.

In the October issue of Sight and Sound, the film’s director, Coralie Fargeat, explains that it’s not intended as a caricature, but “a mirror of society’s misogynistic mentality”. It really is “that gross … that violent in the real world,” she argues.

Many agree with her. In a review for Film International, film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas goes as far as to call The Substance a “documentary”, due to its “emotional fidelity”. That is, its ability to make literal the disconnection between body and consciousness caused by ageing, which impacts women particularly negatively.

The trailer for The Substance.

A growing body of films

The Substance is not the only major film in 2024 to be marketed, either fully or in part, as “body horror”. This is surprising because body horror originally emerged as a niche, often independently produced, sub-genre.

Body horror’s gruesome aesthetic and themes of corporeal decay, transformation and mutilation can be off-putting for many viewers. Yet films like Love Lies Bleeding, Tiger Stripes and I Saw the TV Glow (which all had wide releases in 2024) have turned to the sub-genre. Their directors have been drawn to its ability to tell timely stories about the way corporeality, identity and social interactions cannot be separated.

These films are largely about marginalised or maladjusted people. They show how our personal actions and sense of identity are always affected by the availability of role models and the limitations imposed on people by governmental, educational, religious and familial forces. For example, the teenage protagonist in Tiger Stripes rebels against the expectations that, because she is a girl, she should cover her hair, show modesty and be courteous.

From Poor Things and Infinity Pool (both 2023) to Hatching (2022) and Titane (2021), the 2020s are shaping up into something of a new golden age for body horror.

Novelist A.K. Blakemore has written of the rise of “femcore” – a literary trend of “ultraviolent body-horror”. Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020), Alison Rumfitt’s Brainwyrms (2023), Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part (2024) and the anthology Of the Flesh (2024) are included under this label.

And there’s a similar trend emerging in streaming shows, from the episode The Outside from Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) to Alice Birch’s remake of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (2023).

The body horror in The Substance.
Courtesy of Mubi

A sub-genre with substance

One of the key things that characterises this contemporary wave of body horror is the influx of directors who identify as women and as queer.

There were far fewer women and queer directors in the late 1970s and 1980s, when body horror gained popularity thanks to films like The Evil Dead (1981), The Fly (1986) and Hellraiser (1987), than there are now. This decade has made big moves towards inclusion, and the film industry has been greatly impacted by social movements like Me Too, Trans Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter, even if much work is yet to be done.

Body horror is particularly appealing to creators who would have previously found it difficult to make a living in the world of commercial filmmaking. Filmmakers (including Rose Glass, Amanda Nell Eu, Jane Schoenbrun, Hanna Bergholm, Julia Ducournau, Michelle Garza Cervera, Natalie Erika James, Alice Maio Mackay, Nia DaCosta and Coralie Fargeat) have found a valuable lexicon for feminist, trans-activist and anti-racist messages in the sub-genre. Many of them talk about their work as highly personal – if not based on their direct experience.

The body horror sub-genre is attuned to the violence of social exclusion and discrimination. Its metamorphic, painful, insidious and carnal nightmares help articulate the concerns of a new generation of artists for whom corporeality, and sometimes simply being visible, has become a political statement.

David Cronenberg closed his classic body horror film Videodrome (1983) with the emblematic line: “Long live the new flesh!” He needn’t have worried. It’s here to stay.


Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.




Source link

Continue Reading

Filmmaking

Angry, wise, or plain horny? Zeus comes in many forms onscreen – just as he did in the original myths

Published

on

By

Angry, wise, or plain horny? Zeus comes in many forms onscreen – just as he did in the original myths


With a flash of garish colour and the blaring of an ’80s rock track we are on Mount Olympus, home to the pantheon of ancient Greek gods and goddesses.

But its not the Mount Olympus you’d normally think of. It’s an opulent house with large-screen TVs and gold watches. Overseeing it all is mighty Zeus, the king of the gods, played by Jeff Goldblum.

Netflix’s new six-part series, KAOS, is a brilliant reimagining of classical mythology for the 21st century. Created by Charlie Covell, writer on The End of the F***ing World (2017–19), the series follows six humans who learn they are part of a larger prophecy – their fates at the mercy and whims of the Olympian gods.

Narrated by Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), the series is darkly comedic in its exploration of themes from the original myths, such as power and abuse, gender politics and life after death.

Goldblum’s take on Zeus is mercurial. Powerful, but petulant and selfish, his Zeus is insecure. It’s a fascinating take on the god. “My character is complicated and charismatic, not to mention cruel,” the actor revealed in an interview.

The ancient Greeks themselves were ambiguous about Zeus. He could be a fearful figure or a humorous one. He ended up with dozens of epithets, ranging from Areius (“warlike”) to Zygius (“presider over marriage”), and most commonly Olympios and Panhellenios to signify his divine power over gods and humans alike.

Hollywood has similarly found a variety of ways to present Zeus, but usually in supporting roles (unlike in KAOS, where Zeus takes centre stage). In fact, one early cinematic appearance of the god was at the birth of filmmaking itself, in Georges Méliès’ silent film Jupiter’s Thunderballs (1903).

Zeus the powerful and vengeful god

Zeus (and his Roman equivalent Jupiter) was the god of sky and thunder in the Greek pantheon on Mount Olympus, and the father of many heroes and demigods of classical mythology. His main visual attribute was the lightning bolt, which is hinted at cleverly in a number of scenes in Goldblum’s performance.

The most common portrayal of Zeus in film and television is that of a vengeful and wrathful god who interferes with and manipulates the activities of others.

In Clash of the Titans (1981), a retelling of the myth of Perseus, Zeus (Laurence Olivier) manipulates the gods to support Perseus.

And this continues in the 2010 remake and its sequel, Wrath of the Titans (2012), in which Zeus (Liam Neeson) is an active participant in a plot centred on the struggle against Hades.

In the film Immortals (2011), although Zeus is often detached from the plot and merely observes, he is ultimately roused to action by anger.

Similarly, in the Percy Jackson films and TV series (based on Rick Riordan’s books), Zeus is characterised by his anger directed at Percy as he accuses him of stealing his lightning bolt.

Zeus the lustful abuser

Zeus was, well… there is no other way of saying it… horny. Incredibly horny. Despite the long-suffering protestations of his wife (and sister), Hera, Zeus would go on to father innumerable gods and demigods in the original myths.

His affairs with both divine and mortal women were almost always non-consensual and always ended badly for the seduced woman, who would either immediately die upon seeing Zeus in divine form or suffer the inventive vengeance of Hera. As Susie Donkin explained in the title of her 2020 book: Zeus is a Dick.

Unlike many filmed portrayals of Zeus, KAOS does not shy away from this aspect of his behaviour. But it is perhaps best represented in the adult animated series Blood of Zeus (2020-), in which much of the plot is driven by the aftermath of Zeus’ sexual proclivities.

Zeus the father figure

Hercules (Herakles in Greek) is one of the most filmed characters of all time, so the appearance of Zeus as his father is expected.

Perhaps most fondly remembered by all is Disney’s film Hercules (1997), in which Zeus (voiced by Rip Torn) is a warm and wise father. “For a true hero isn’t measured by the size of his strength, but by the strength of his heart,” he advises his son.

Hercules in New York (1970) is a cult film best known as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first (dubbed) role as the titular strongman in contemporary New York. Here, Zeus (Ernest Graves) is responsible for Hercules’ exile – angry, but wanting the best for his son.

Anthony Quinn played Zeus in the TV movie The Circle of Fire (1994), which kick-started the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–99) and its spin-off Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001). Zeus appeared periodically in both. Although Hercules in the series often referred to the neglectfulness of his father, Zeus is still presented as a loving parent in each appearance.

Zeus the comical

Zeus is also perfect to poke fun at. The ancients did it; in Aristophanes’ comedic play The Birds, for example, Zeus’ all-seeing vision is blocked by merely a raised parasol.

Perhaps the best example of this in modern cinema is Russell Crowe’s depiction in the Marvel movie Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). In this campy take, Zeus is all lightning bolts, with a toga that hides very little, and a controversial Greek accent.

But there was also a poignancy in Crowe’s Zeus, such as when he states:

It used to be that being a god, it meant something. People would whisper your name, before sharing their deepest hopes and dreams. They begged you for mercy, without ever knowing if you were actually listening. Now, when they look to the sky, they don’t ask us for lightning, they don’t ask us for rain, they just want to see one of their so-called superheroes. When did we become the joke?

Just as the ancient Greeks had many versions of Zeus, so does the modern world. And Jeff Goldblum’s brilliant performance suggests we certainly haven’t seen the last of Zeus’ thunderbolts onscreen.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending